Summer is in full swing here and I’ve been busier than a cross-eyed air traffic controller.

Aside from having the three kids home all the time for summer vacation and being very absorbed with a huge work project for my other home, In The Powder Room.com, I’ve also been overseeing a pretty massive home improvement project. No, it’s not the master bathroom that I still haven’t finished. (Shameful.) We finally bit the bullet and hired professionals to put new siding on our house and do some upgrades to our homely front porch.

We’ve been in this house for 10 years and had never done anything to the exterior other than rip out all the overgrown meatball-shaped foundation shrubs that were covering all the windows on the main level.

The time had come for us to Love It or List It. And since Hilary and David probably weren’t going to show up and help me make that decision, I would have to take matters into my own ginormous hands and start making some improvements.

Either way, new siding and paint were a must.

The construction started almost one month ago on May 13th, the day after Mother’s Day. I’ll never forget that date because it was sooner than I was expecting it to start and I was not ready with my color choices.

The pressure!

I did NOT want to be that house that neighbors walk by and shake their heads about, whispering “Bless her heart. She must have damaged her optic nerves in that tragic snapping turtle incident.”

So I obsessed.

And I spent more time on Pinterest than I did attending to my personal hygiene.

And I consulted experts such as contractors/decorators/friends/family/voices in my head.

And I spent more money and time on sample quarts than I’m prepared to admit.

And after probably way too much deliberation, I finally picked my color scheme!

“Hooray! This is going to be AWESOME!” I thought. After all, I picked the ‘perfect neutral’ according to several reviews on Houzz.com.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, which has been very disappointing.

Talk about first world problems…

The painting is not even done yet, so I can’t show you pictures just yet. Maybe it will all magically come together and I will feel silly for being so upset that I just spent so much money making my house look like a giant nutsack.

At least I’m that much closer to having my next color scheme mapped out for the repainting we’ll have to do five years from now. (#SilverLining)

See? I’m almost to the acceptance phase of the grieving process.

Right now, I’m in the “look for the funny” phase, which is what my people do to survive unspeakable things like tragic loss and decorating mistakes.

I do like that that Annie Sloan paint, but I also learned A LOT about it the hard way. I don’t think there is a single color in her palette that can be bad. But that wax really does take 30 days to cure, so if you put it on your bathroom cabinets like I did, don’t be an ass and start using that bathroom immediately, getting your toothpaste splatters and hairspray and water drips all over it the next day. Doy. The longer I live with those black cabinets, the more I want to paint them gray. Not going to happen any time soon though. 🙂

Ha! I live in “that” house!!! We were going for the aged terracotta pot color (our house is Spanish style) but we ended up with pumpkin orange. After a few days it grew on me. After a week I liked it. Now that it has mellowed I love it!!! What has been funny has been our neighbor’s responses. A few women (you know the type) got a bit hissy, as if I was going to run down the street and paint their house orange. Most folks said that once they got used to it (it used to be off-white) they liked it. But the best comments came from the hissy women’s husbands–they LOVED it. It reminded them of a great vacation they had in Mexico. They were going to talk to their wives to see if they could get some color on their houses instead of white. (these folks do everything together) So you may come to love your Flaccid Penis house. ;-D

Pumpkin orange is one of my favorite colors! That really is funny that all the menfolk love it. Sounds like you live in a great neighborhood Teresa! I did get one really sweet email from a neighbor yesterday (she reads my blog) and she said my house looked great and not at all penis-y, so I got that going for me. Sadly, all the other neighbors have been eerily quiet. They are probably tending to the hostages in their basements.

If you ever do another round of blog tips, you can add my old stand by: “When something is kind of boring and lame, just add the word penis, nutsack, or vagina and it will become infinitely more entertaining!”

It sounds like Greige! Greige is actually better than plain old grey. I’m sure it will be great. Please post a picture of it when it’s done so we can all laugh, I mean ADMIRE your color sense 😉 Now for the penis….must head over to ITP

Hey,
I read the other part ITPR first (a little backwards today) and then I had to do some “housework” and was over by my paints, and – not counting my “good paints”, watercolors, pastels, pencils, pens, and inks- I have over 200 various bottles of paint. I believe we have some sort of conspiracy on our hands. I’m a little pissed. (not sunshine yellow, more like banana). I think your house is going to look really good. Suck it Sherman.

OMG, you know what? I do believe you are onto something there, m’lady! It’s like the “Anti-Fade Shampoo” I bought that one time from L’Oreal that smells like paint thinner. Of course they WANT my hair to fade so I have to buy new hair color! Sounds like the paint companies are tricking us into buying all those sample quarts because the colors “change” based on lighting and direction. Well played, Sherwin. Well played. DAMMIT!

Hi Rebecca! Yes – the shutters actually helped A LOT! And my friend Lisa helped me pick a door color that counteracts the flesh tones of the beige. I put a pic of the door on Instagram. It’s turquoise blue and very pretty! You are so sweet to check back and ask. Thanks for thinking of me!

Guurrrl, I’m right there with you. We’re buying our first house and in the THICK of packing and prepping for the new place and I’m pretty sure I’ve gone insane. Or wait.. do crazy people know they’re insane? This post made me even more scared to paint the interior because WHAT IF IT LOOKS LIKE A VAGINA OR BABY PUKE IN THE END?

Well, good luck with your nutsack. Just paint some squiggly black lines in a patch near the top… that’s REALLY looking for the funny! 😉

Thank you! Well at least on the interior, it is a really easy fix. The exterior, not so much. Good luck! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that your move and paint choosing goes well and that everything looks vagina/baby puke free!

I about had a nervous breakdown choosing three bedrooms worth of curtains and you had to choose a color for the exterior of an entire house? I would need to be sedated. Or move. You’re a brave, brave woman.

Okay as the wife of a house painter I feel your pain. We have been through this with many customers. What I will tell you is if you don’t have the trim painted yet do up some sample boards with different trim paint and hold them against the house. The right trim paint can make a huge difference with a not-so-great body color. Good luck. (And no, your painter cannot repaint it free of charge because you don’t like the color you picked.)(Yes, we actually get asked to do that.)

Although I appreciate your willingness to approve your home’s curb appeal, I’m a bit disappointed in how you went about it. If you want to make a huge improvement, and ensure the neighbors love whatever color you choose, you need to do something drastic.

Let the house go. Chip off some of the paint, let your overgrown bush sway in the breeze, and don’t trim any of the surrounding hedges.

That way, it will look so bad that when you decide to fix it up and paint, the neighbors (and you) won’t care what color the paint is…as long as it’s painted. So grab that Flacid Penis color and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Ohh…you can never look back! I told my munchkins yesterday, once you make up your mind, don’t look back, because you’ll always find something you think is better than what you decided on. I’m a nutsicle, that’s how I know.

Okay, Leslie (and all other women struggling with phallic, pudendum, breast, or baby puke colored paint samples), I have the solution: Be Bold! Stand Tall & Erect With Your Choices! You are now artistic trend-setters, a.k.a. Lena Dunham. No, seriously; truly LIKE Lena Dunham, of “Girls” fame, et al. Her dad, Carroll Dunham, is quite the famous artist ~ all we have to do is hang a work or two of his, and I GUARANTEE your paint choices will complement what he is expressing. I can’t exactly post a sample on this site, although the searchword “Beard” may ge a few hits. Instead, check him out for yourself: